Didache 2: Origins & Textual Relationships

[MrMacSon]

I think 1 Clement, the Didache, Barnabas' epistle and Revelation, all of them written before the end of the 1st century, include gospels material, as explained here:

• http://historical-jesus.info/gospels.html#1clement (for 1 Clement, the Didache & Barnabas' epistle)
  
  and here for Revelation: http://historical-jesus.info/rjohn.html, then search on >> gmatthew << (short read)

I responded

re the Didache -

• You [Bernard] say [on one of your web-pages - http://historical-jesus.info/gospels.html#1clement ] -
  
  • "Generally speaking, all gospel-like material in the Didache have parallels in GMatthew", and
    
    "each of the gospel parallel in the Didache appears either in all the Synoptics, or in both GLuke & GMatthew only ("Q"), or solely in GMatthew"
    
    with one exception: Ch.16 <=> Lk12:35-40 YLT
  You also say "with the wording extracted from GMatthew, "Son" was substituted by "God" in the Didache. It looks the author did not like Jesus being called "the Son of David": that would be most understandable from an Ebionite's viewpoint!"

and I then said

It is possible that

• the Didache originated at the same time as the Synoptics; or
  
  that the Synoptics derived some of their information from texts like the Didache; or
  
  the authors of the Synoptics and the author/s of the Didache developed their theology from a pre-existing theology or source

Bernard challenged me thus -

to MrMacSon,

• Why don't you work on these possibilities and prove that at least one of them is a probability?

Cordially, Bernard

There is already a thread called The Didache hence the name of this thread.

• Some of the discussion there is pertinent to my point and Bernard's challenge - see the next post

In the meantime, some background -

The Didache (/ˈdɪdəkiː/; Koine Greek: Διδαχή) or The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (Didachē means "Teaching")[1] is a brief anonymous early Christian treatise, dated by most modern scholars to the first century.[2] The first line of this treatise is "Teaching of the Lord to the Gentiles (or Nations) by the Twelve Apostles".[Greek: Διδαχὴ κυρίου διὰ τῶν δώδεκα ἀποστόλων τοῖς ἔθνεσιν.]

• 2 a. Cross, edited by F.L. (2005). The Oxford dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd rev. ed. ed.). Oxford: OUP. p. 482.
  
  ..b. I have seen a range 50-300 AD/CE

The Didache is considered part of the category of second-generation Christian writings known as the Apostolic Fathers. The work was considered by some Church Fathers as part of the New Testament,[6][7][8] while being rejected as spurious or non-canonical by others,[9][10][11] and eventually was not accepted into the New Testament canon. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church "broader canon" includes the Didascalia, a work which draws on the Didache.

Lost for centuries, a Greek manuscript of the Didache was rediscovered in 1873 by Philotheos Bryennios, [Greek Orthodox] Metropolitan of Nicomedia in the Codex Hierosolymitanus. A Latin version of the first five chapters was discovered in 1900 by J. Schlecht.[12]

• 6 Rufinus, Commentary on Apostles Creed 37 (as Deuterocanonical) c. 380
  
  7 John of Damascus Exact Exposition of Orthodox Faith 4.17.
  
  8 The 81-book canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church

Date, composition and modern translations

Many English and American scholars once dated the text to the late 2nd century CE,[3] a view still held today,[13] but most scholars now assign the Didache to the first century.[14][15] The document is a composite work, and the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls with its Manual of Discipline provided evidence of development over a considerable period of time, beginning as a Jewish catechetical work which was then developed into a church manual.[16] Additionally, apart from two minuscule fragments, the Greek text of the Didache has only survived in a single manuscript, the Codex Hierosolymitanus. Dating the document is thus made difficult both by the lack of hard evidence and its composite character. The Didache may have been compiled in its present form as late as 150, although a date closer to the end of the first century seems more probable to many.[17] It is an anonymous work, a pastoral manual that Aaron Milavec states "reveals more about how Jewish-Christians saw themselves and how they adapted their Judaism for gentiles than any other book in the Christian Scriptures."[4] The Two Ways section is likely based on an earlier Jewish source.[3] The community that produced the Didache was probably based in Syria.[3][18]

The text was lost, but scholars knew of it through the writing of later church fathers, some of whom had drawn heavily on it.[19] In 1873 in Istanbul, metropolitan Philotheos Bryennios found a Greek copy of the Didache, written in 1056, and he published it in 1883.[19] Hitchcock and Brown produced the first English translation in March 1884. Adolf von Harnack produced the first German translation in 1884, and Paul Sabatier produced the first French translation and commentary in 1885.[20]

• 13 Slee, Michelle (2003). The church in Antioch in the first century CE : communion and conflict. London [u.a.]: T & T Clark International. p. 58.
  
  15 O'Loughlin, Thomas (2011). The Didache: A window on the earliest Christians. SPCK. Retrieved 2 July 2015.

From Peter Kirby's http://www.earlychristianwritings.com (where there is more commentary than what I have quoted here) -

Jonathan Draper writes (Gospel Perspectives, vol. 5 (1985), p. 269 (pp. 268-288):

"Since it was discovered in a monastery in Constantinople and published by P. Bryennios in 1883, the Didache or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles has continued to be one of the most disputed of early Christian texts. It has been depicted by scholars as anything between the original of the Apostolic Decree (c. 50 AD) and a late archaising fiction of the early third century. It bears no date itself, nor does it make reference to any datable external event, yet the picture of the Church which it presents could only be described as primitive, reaching back to the very earliest stages of the Church's order and practice in a way which largely agrees with the picture presented by the NT, while at the same time posing questions for many traditional interpretations of this first period of the Church's life. Fragments of the Didache were found at Oxyrhyncus (P. Oxy 1782) from the fourth century and in coptic translation (P. Lond. Or. 9271) from 3/4th century. Traces of the use of this text, and the high regard it enjoyed, are widespread in the literature of the second and third centuries especially in Syria and Egypt. It was used by the compilator of the Didascalia (C 2/3rd) and the Liber Graduun (C 3/4th), as well as being absorbed in toto by the Apostolic Constitutions (C c. 3/4th, abbreviated as Ca) and partially by various Egyptian and Ethiopian Church Orders, after which it ceased to circulate independently. Athanasius describes it as 'appointed by the Fathers to be read by those who newly join us, and who wish for instruction in the word of goodness' [Festal Letter 39:7]. Hence a date for the Didache in its present form later than the second century must be considered unlikely, and a date before the end of the first century probable."


Udo Schnelle makes the following remark about the Didache (The History and Theology of the New Testament Writings, p. 355):

• "The Didache means by 'the gospel' (8.2; 11.3; 15.3, 4) the Gospel of Matthew; thus the Didache, which originated about 110 CE, documents the emerging authority of the one great Gospel."

Stevan Davies comments on the Didache (Jesus the Healer, p. 175):

• "The Didache is a text that gives instruction on how a Christian community should treat itinerant Christian prophets. It was written sometime in the late first or early second century and gives good evidence for a structured church's shift in orientation away from spirit-possession. The Didache is written from the view point of a community leadership that distrusts, and yet respects, Christian prophets, one that wishes the prophets to leave town as quickly as possible, yet would have them welcomed in town when they arrive. The Pastoral and Petrine epistles stem from a slightly later time, when authority in the Christian movement was based on the prerogatives of office rather than on prophetic powers."

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/didache.html

From the Catholic Encylopedia

The Didache

A short treatise which was accounted by some of the Fathers as next to Holy Scripture. It was rediscovered in 1873 by Bryennios, Greek Orthodox metropolitan of Nicomedia, in the codex from which, in 1875, he had published the full text of the Epistles of St. Clement. The title in the manuscript is Didache kyriou dia ton dodeka apostolon ethesin, but before this it gives the heading Didache ton dodeka apostolon. The old Latin translation of cc. i-v, found by Dr. J. Schlecht in 1900, has the longer title, omitting "twelve", and has a rubric De doctrinâ Apostolorum ...

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04779a.htm

[MrMacSon]

.
Preliminary pickings from the other Didache thread-

1. a. The Didache as an Extant Instance of Q: http://www.alangarrow.com/extantq.html

1. b. Garrow published 'The Gospel of Matthew's Dependence on the Didache ' (Bloomsbury Academic, NIPPOD edition) in 2013)

• An earlier edn(?) - Alan J. P. Garrow 'The Gospel of Matthew's Dependence on the Didache' Journal for the Study of the New Testament: Supplement Series 254 New York: T & T Clark, 2004 Pp. xxxiii + 272.
  
  • a review by James A. Kelhoffer - https://muse.jhu.edu/article/186939/summary

2. Aaron Milavec, Professor Emeritus, Piqua, OH 45356, has also has argued "the Didache predates the written Gospels", but has different views to Garrow.

• (Maybe this: Review of Allan J.P. Garrow, The Gospel of Matthew's Dependence on the Didache (London: T&T Clark International, 2004) in Catholic Biblical Quarterly 67 (2005)146-147).

Garrow argues that (most of) the Didache predates Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

...quite a few Didache experts are of the opinion that (at least parts of) it predates the canonical gospels. Garrow is not alone in this.

But Garrow has definitely forged his own path in that direction; his observations are not just copycat versions of the others', so of course there is going to be disagreement on the specifics.

- a. Milavec A (2003) Synoptic Tradition in the Didache Revisited Journal of Early Christian Studies, 11:4; pp.443-480

• Abstract
  "This study reexamines the evidence for and against the claim that the creators of the Didache made use of Matthew's gospel. In the past, scholars were content to list parallel texts by way of establishing the case for dependence. More recently, however, more insightful criteria have been defined. Even in cases of exact verbal agreement, for example, one has to explore to what degree contexts and meanings overlap. Furthermore, one has to explore whether shared issues (fasting, praying, almsgiving, correcting, offering 'sacrifice') are resolved along parallel lines. Likewise, textual dependence can no longer disregard orality and oral transmission. In the end, this study concludes that Matthew's gospel and the Didache reveal two religious systems that grew up independently of each other. Should Didache scholars come to accept this, the way would be open for an early dating of the Didache and for its interpretation as a self-contained religious system that must be allowed to speak for itself without appealing to any known gospel. A new era of Didache studies would thus lie open before us."

- b. Milavec A (2003) The Didache: Faith, Hope, and Life of the Earliest Christian Communities, 50-70 C.E on Amazon


- c. Milavec A "The Distress Signals of Didache Research - Quest for a Viable Future," The Didache: A Missing Piece of the Puzzle in Early Christianity

• ed. by Jonathan A Draper & Clayton N Jefford. SBL Early Christian Literature Series;, ed. by Gail O'Day (Atlanta: Soc. of Biblical Literature, 2015).
  
  ToC and introduction - https://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/pu ... -front.pdf

3.

..I'd like to add a post by our Tenorikuma “Has the Q Source Been Under Our Noses All Along? Luke, Matthew, and the Didache”

----------------- Ancillary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I really think that Didache 16 (or something like it) preceded Mark 13 and Matthew 24.

It is also my impression that parts of the Didache or something like it preceded Mark.

It's worth noting that Mark 13 and Matthew 24 are part of the Olivet Discourse.

.

[Ben C. Smith]

.
Preliminary pickings from the other Didache thread-

Let me add one more: http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... 913#p47913, my summary of Garrow's argument that Didache 16 (or something very much like it) preceded both Matthew 24 and Mark 13 in time.

[Ulan]

Udo Schnelle makes the following remark about the Didache (The History and Theology of the New Testament Writings, p. 355):

• "The Didache means by 'the gospel' (8.2; 11.3; 15.3, 4) the Gospel of Matthew; thus the Didache, which originated about 110 CE, documents the emerging authority of the one great Gospel."

This idea is not uncommon in German scholarship. Gerd Theissen suggests that it was composed deliberately as continuation and supplementation of gMatthew. The latter ends with Jesus sending out the disciples, and the Didache then explains what they are supposed to teach ("Die Entstehung des Neuen Testaments als literaturgeschichtliches Problem [2007], p.199]*. Which means he sees the Didache as the "Acts" of gMatthew, maybe meant to be distributed in a parcel, before the 4 gospel tradition came up. Or differently put, he suggests gMatthew+Didache as one of several nuclei to build a canon, which failed in this case because of the relative insignificance of Jewish-Christian communities (p.299).

*The English version has the title "The New Testament: A Literary History"

[Bernard Muller]

Note: my reference is http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... berts.html and some elements in the following text are not explained in my website.

I made some thinking lately about the Didache and I slightly change my mind about it.
But I still think the Didache started as an Ebionite document, Christianized later by interpolator(s).

So what would be the original Didache?
What we have now, minus chapters 7, 12 & 15, also minus "and immortality" & "and life eternal" (ch. 10) and "through Jesus Christ" (ch. 9).

In my view, "Lord" always means God in the Didache.
Of course there is a problem with "Lord has said, "Give not that which is holy to the dogs."" (ch. 9) and "the Lord commanded in His Gospel, like this: [gMatthew version of the Lord's prayer plus an addition to it]" (ch. 8).
That problem can be solved if the "gospel" in the Didache was a written sayings gospel:
- with no authorship assigned to these two sayings,
OR
- the author considering "servant Jesus" as just a spokesman of God (the Lord), making known God's thought & command: "servant Jesus" is always associated about providing knowledge of God.

For the dating of that Didache (from http://historical-jesus.info/gospels.html):

>> A passage of the last chapter is most unflattering for the title of "Son of God":
Ch.16 "... and then shall appear the deceiver of the world as a son of god [also translated as "the Son of God" but ancient Greek has no capital letters], and shall do signs and wonders
[in Mt24:24, "great signs and wonders" will be given by false christs & false prophets, right before the "end"]
` and the earth shall be given over into his hands and he shall commit iniquities which have never been since the world began [Mt24:21].
... And then shall appear the signs of the truth: first, the sign of an outspreading in heaven, then the sign of the sound of the trumpet [Mt24:31]. And third, the resurrection of the dead"
Here, a "son of god" is satanic and the quoted 1st part of the passage is in the same frame of mind as elements of 'Revelation', with the "beast" and its "false prophet" (Rev19:20).
The "deceiver" is most likely emperor Domitian (81-96C.E.), the one of the great tribulation of 93-96: Domitian asked to be called "lord and god" during his rule. Also, he was the son of Vespasian, deified earlier (80C.E.) by Titus.
Suetonius (69-122), Roman historian, 'The Lives of the Caesars', Book VIII, Domitian XIII:
"With no less arrogance he [Domitian, early in his reign] began as follows in issuing a circular letter in the name of his procurators, "Our Lord and our God [Latin: 'Dominus et Deus noster'] bids that this be done." And so the custom arose of henceforth addressing him in no other way even in writing or in conversation."
So "deceiver of the world" and "son of god" are most justified for Domitian (from a "Didachee" point of view!).

Because the "end" (and Kingdom) was supposed to be in the days of this great deceiver, it appears the Didache (the one with chapter 16 and minus a few later interpolations: chapters 7, 12 & 15, with also "and immortality" & "and life eternal" (ch. 10) and "through Jesus Christ" (ch. 9)) was published then, that is before Domitian's death (Sept. 96C.E.) <<

Cordially, Bernard